


Crease

by Mivuli



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Grieving, John's perspective, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 21:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8224852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mivuli/pseuds/Mivuli
Summary: There is a crease in the seat of Sherlock’s sofa.





	

There is a crease in the seat of Sherlock’s sofa. Rubbed there as a baker kneads his mark into dough with the heel of his hand – or, in Sherlock’s case, with the slip and slide of his pretentious rump. In his Sunday’s best, or his dressing-gown. Slumping into a slaked post-patch crumple of satin and curls, or a coil of irascible, bristling energy pre-patch, every hair electric. The depression takes on the mild shape of Sherlock’s bottom even when he isn’t there. It’s that indelible, nothing more than a wrinkle of leather, but impossibly permanent all the same. It speaks of days on end spent having a sulk, spent hovering in limbo between life and death after a gruelling case. Not that Sherlock would ever admit his exploits took a toll on his body; he seldom admitted anything he didn’t like, really.

 

The constancy of the creases were a balm to frayed nerves after long days at the surgery, or another break-neck gallop through the seedy alley-network of London. I could sit in the settee opposite from his chair, and fancy myself a detective for a second or two, deriving from the imprint in the leather, the depth and height at which shape had been retained, how much longer it would be before Sherlock turned up at my elbow with a smoggy cuppa and proceeded to the window to serenade the fortunate of Baker Street below with some lilting tune from Tchaikovsky, Bach, some big-name composer. Whose music he played didn’t matter to me at the time. All I knew of them was that they were dead. Just like you now, Sherlock. Are you drawing your bow over your strings to paint for them pictures of wailing notes and vibratos? Can you masterfully coax from your strings the keening sound I hear in my heart, whenever I see the crease in your chair now? Can you replicate the noises, and then turn to Bach and Tchaikovsky before it is finished, and say with your impatient, trifling air, _This is what I left behind_?

 

I used to love that sofa crease so much. It told me you would be back, even on the nights you prowled in the underworld of crime doing Lord knows what, instead of watching crap telly in 221B like ordinary people do. Now I spend mornings, afternoons, days and nights sitting in my armchair and loathing the shit out of yours. Benign piece of furniture, sitting there like it was intended to. But we intended different things, didn’t we? I thought I could talk you down, but it was my cry of your name that seemed to topple you from your perch, arms spread and coattail streaming behind you like the tail of a magnificent phoenix fallen in ashes. My call tugged you down, in the worst unimaginable way.

 

I hate the chair. I hate the furrow in the seat, the matching furrow that squirms its way between my brows as I contemplate how to be rid of my misery. I could move out – a rent-share was what I agreed to, eighteen months ago: not this – and find a place where the fee’s cheaper. Mrs Hudson would slash the rent if I asked, I know she would. But no matter how quickly I pay away the bills as they come flurrying in through the mail-box, it is the knife-wound in the table that will haunt me. The jagged scar in the wood, the scars you’ve left over every surface of 221B. Because that was your way, wasn’t it? Blister a path wherever you go, and people will remember you. Oh, you did good, Sherlock. We remember you good. Your memory’s alive and well, even if you aren’t, and the scar your backside left on your chair is the most harrowing one that confronts me.

 

And yet. No matter how viscerally I hate that crease, want to burn the chair into ashes and scatter them over the roof’s edge at St. Bart’s – because like must follow like, eh, Sherlock? When an owner disappears off the face of the earth, so should his possessions – and just throw it out of my life for being such a goddamned reminder of my grief and disconsolation and the loss oh god the loss, I can’t bring myself to lift one finger and smooth the crease away. That’s all it would take, really. The folds of the leather bear in its cupped palms the weight of you, the promised heat of a live body that stomps and shouts and shoots bullets into the wall and plays the violin and conducts experiments all at the same time. All I have to do is pat away the crests and troughs of the life of a man who saved me after the war had ended, and it’ll all go away.

 

Somehow I can’t bring myself to.

 

* * *

 

_John._

_Really, it’s been two years and the password protection system on your laptop remains, as always, a laughing stock. (Be a good man and erase your browser history after this, even I am at liberty to inform you of the compromising nature of the copious sites you have yet to scour from your cache) A very sentimental piece of writing, this eulogy of sorts. One might say it is in the running for your most affected story yet. Faithfuls of_ The Strand _must rejoice it has stayed in your hard-drive, nestled and bookended by your porn._

_And yet._

_To take your literature and apply it as a lens over my own eye, I can make several observations of our flat. For one, Mrs Hudson has not done the dusting in an inordinate amount of time. The curtains are alive with bacteria from the dead skin cells that have simply accumulated into veritable colonies themselves, and I am positive that my hair has increased in weight simply by being in this room. How anomalous, since I have been fending off her feathers ever since I first moved into Baker Street. Who could have known she would only respect my wishes after I was too dead to appreciate it? If I had been aware I might have died sooner._

 

_For another, your armchair has no crease, John. It is looking decidedly unruffled and piteously empty. I do wonder how long it has been since you last occupied it._

 

_If convenient, come at once to rectify that fact._

 

_Come too anyway, if inconvenient._

 

\- SH

 


End file.
